Cross Campus: 10.31.11

Happy Halloween! Tonight is the spookiest night of the year. University President Richard Levin will hold his annual reception at 9:30 p.m. at the President’s House on Hillhouse Ave., and the Yale Symphony Orchestra will host its annual Halloween Show at 11:59 p.m.

Early birds. Though tonight’s the big night, some campus organizations have already held their major Halloween events. At the Peabody Museum’s celebration on Saturday, guests marveled at hissing cockroaches, various snakes large and small and opportunities for children of all ages to color. Later that night, students in Jonathan Edwards and Branford went “liquor treating.”

Zumba for a good cause. New Haven Reads, a nonprofit promoting literacy, held a Zumba fundraiser Sunday afternoon at Payne Whitney. Participants paid $20 to wiggle their hips for an hour under the leadership of three Zumba instructors.

Elis Occupy. In spite of the cold, seven freshmen set up the first tent of Yale students at Occupy New Haven on Sunday.

QPac suffers. Though some students living off campus at Quinnipiac University lost power, the Quinnipiac Chronicle reported that others were more concerned that the university had cancelled its Saturday night shuttles to New Haven and Hamden. “It was really disappointing to find out that Quinnipiac shuttles aren’t running on Halloween weekend. Especially because everyone was counting on Toad’s to have one of the biggest Halloween parties in the area,” Quinnipiac junior Alyssa De Visser told the Chronicel.

GPSCY’s on fire, but actually. An unknown perpetrator pulled a fire alarm at Gryphon’s Pub at GPSCY’s Saturday night Halloween Party, forcing revelers to evacuate the building, even if they ere clothed in less-than-modest costumes. The grad student hotspot cancelled the party.

Who? The Whitney Humanities Center held a screening of one of James Franco’s GRD ’16 latest films, “The Broken Tower,” in the WHC auditorium on Sunday. Roughly 24 people gathered to watch the film, which chronicles the brief, tragic life of American poet Hart Crane. Though Franco directed, wrote and starred in the film, he was not on hand to introduce his project.

THIS DAY IN YALE HISTORY

1963 A graduate student working on mock elections in Natchez, Miss., is beaten by angry citizens and police officers for his efforts to promote equality.